Microsoft’s New Mobile Strategy: Software for Every Platform

Alternate MS Office icons by talwayseb, via CrystalXP.net

Microsoft is a giant company working in many different fields, but in the consumer market, apart from XBox, it does one thing really well: software. After some high-profile, quickly-aborted misadventures in mobile, that’s what it’s going to focus on from now on.

Microsoft’s Tivanka Ellawala told the WSJ that the company’s done with smartphone hardware (beyond in-house prototypes, presumably): “We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused,” he said. That means no follow-ups to the Kin social media smartphone, definitely; no resuscitation of the Courier e-reader/tablet project, probably; and a new focus on making apps for other platforms, quite possibly.

So besides search, what are we talking about here? Microsoft Office? (Which, remember, includes a LOT of apps, not just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.) Games? Messenger? Frontend clients for Windows Live? Specialized applications for enterprise clients? Virtual PC, to mix it up with VMWare’s anticipated virtualization apps? No one knows.

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